


Beneath the Mask

by Flufferdoodle



Series: perceptions [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, Five plus one format but it's a lot more than five, and by a lot more than five i mean eight, plus one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28728351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flufferdoodle/pseuds/Flufferdoodle
Summary: He is nothing until he isn't. After all, all you need to do to change someone is to simply see them differently.
Relationships: Amamiya Ren & Morgana (Persona Series), Kurusu Akira & Morgana, Morgana & Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: perceptions [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095905
Comments: 1
Kudos: 55





	Beneath the Mask

The kid’s a deadbeat. Quiet, slouchy, sulky. Slinks off at odd hours, slinks in at stranger ones. Doesn’t quite make eye contact, gaze permanently fixed on the floor.

Sojiro didn’t know what else he expected, really. He talks some, picking at the obvious sore points, trying to get a rise out of him. See if he can shake that dull expression. The most the kid can manage is a mumbled “that’s not what happened,” or the occasional “then why’d you take me in?”

It’s not that the kid lacks a backbone. It’s that he’s just too apathetic.

Sojiro wonders what could possibly get a rise out of him so much that he’d get shipped off to Tokoyo on probation for a year. Maybe the kid was a druggie, maybe the kid got in a fight over that.

But Sojiro searched his things once, while he was out at school, and found nothing to suggest even that.

The kid was just a deadbeat.

Until he sets down the book he’s not really reading, the stray cat meowing and chirping for attention, and asks Sojiro how to make coffee.

The transfer student was hopeless. Had a head full of wool and slower than a goddamn snail, Ryuji figured. He looked so lost and confused standing there on the sidewalk, not comprehending what the hell was happening. And, of course, Ann slipped off in that car with Kamoshida, and the new kid didn’t say a word about it.

Fucking idiot.

But Ryuji’s got nobody better to talk to, and the kid’s gonna get eaten alive at school, and he really had to have _something_ going on if any of the rumors held even a scrap of truth.

They reach the school that’s now a castle, and the new guy doesn’t even panic. He just stares on, a little bit confused.

“Is this the school?” he asks.

The transfer student was hopeless.

Until he rips the mask off his face, blood pouring out, and calls down some supernatural fury onto the knights holding Ryuji in place.

Ryuji’s new friend was a pushover, and his only remarkable trait was the cat he carried around with him. The rumors about him were ten times worse than the rumors about Ann, and watching him do nothing but take it pisses her off. He doesn’t hold his head high, doesn’t pretend he doesn’t hear them. He just mopes and clings to Ryuji.

She’d honestly thought Ryuji had better taste in friends than that, but really, post-track, he must’ve fallen pretty far.

Ann just wishes the boy never showed up to begin with. She’d hoped, for a second, that he’d say something when they first met; when they stood out of the rain before Kamoshida arrived.

She put so much hope on someone new not knowing what everyone said about her, understanding the unjustness of an undeserved reputation.

But he just slouched his way through school, barely muttering a word.

Ryuji’s new friend was a pushover.

Until she’s lying on the floor under Kamoshida’s heel, and he commands her, quietly, urgently, to seek her own justice.

The black-haired boy that hung around Takamaki was dull. Yusuke had an eye for these things, and between Takamaki’s ethereal beauty and Ryuji’s crude passion, the black-haired boy had nothing. Empty. Just a shell. A mirror, occasionally, reflecting just fragments of the thoughts of his companions.

As he tries to sketch Takamaki, it’s not the cat or Ryuji’s outbursts that distract Yusuke so. It’s the unrelenting _plain_ -ness of her companion. How could someone like _him_ earn a right to live in such a beautiful world with no appreciation?

He’s just a husk. A painting done for profit. Meaningless. Boring. Shadowed, rightfully, by the brilliant beacons of light on either side.

Yes, the black-haired boy was just dull.

Until they’re standing in Mementos together, alone in a swirl of human desire, and he hands Yusuke a card to paint.

The delinquent was plain, Makoto thought. Surely, he had some violent tendency in him buried somewhere. Maybe, if she caught him in the right light, she could see some mischief in his eyes. Some inkling of evidence to suggest that he was all his record claimed to be.

But she can’t see it, because he’s overwhelmingly average and unassuming, and she lets it be until the principal tells her not to.

All the evidence points to the delinquent as being involved with the Phantom Thieves. The timing, the argument with Kamoshida, the connection with the Kosei boy. Everything suggested it had to be him. She follows him, quietly willing him to do something, _anything_ to show that maybe there was something there.

But the delinquent is just plain.

Until they’re in Shinjuku facing Eiko and Tsukasa, and Tsukasa makes a move and he shoves him out of the way, threatening him not to touch her.

Sojiro’s ward was boring. So boring it almost made it easier for Futaba to reach out, shrouded in mystery and technology, because what could someone so impossibly uninteresting possibly do about it? She watched how he spent his spare time. Reading, video games, brewing coffee. Boring, boring, boring.

Maybe he was more interesting when he stepped outside the Leblanc, but the wiretap on his phone led Futaba to just believe he didn’t… do anything. He was quiet when he was with the other Phantom Thieves, just dusting a few remarks throughout their conversations, and Futaba wonders if they just keep him around to have someone exceedingly normal to balance out the crazy.

Maybe normal is what she needs? Maybe plain is what will tone down her specific brand of insanity? Maybe he’s empty, and that’s why he can steal so many hearts? To fill his own void?

She doesn’t know, really. She doesn’t know anything about him but one thing.

Sojiro’s ward was boring.

Until she wakes up the next day and walks into the Leblanc, and he’s there in his glasses and apron like he didn’t just spend the day before shooting down the demons in her head, and passes her a plate of curry.

Mona’s owner was quiet. Haru met a lot of quiet people in her life at her father’s events and found her sometimes relieved she wouldn’t have to listen to humble bragging and outright gloating, sometimes frustrated that she couldn’t make progress on them to pass the time.

Mona talks about him almost nonstop during their brief time together, and Haru thinks back to what she saw of him in school and on the trip. He didn’t seem like everything Mona said he was, really. Unassuming, between a student council president, model, and track star.

Silent like the plants, and significantly less beautiful. Maybe that was a cruel thing to say, but it was what she thought.

Mona’s owner was simply quiet.

Until he’s chasing them through Mementos, commanding and eerily steady as he chases down his closest companion, every truth that Mona needs to hear easily falling from his lips.

The student in the TV station was empty. Empty like Akechi, though he did a terrible job of hiding it. Maybe he simply didn’t care enough to. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Being so completely devoid and apathetic that he wouldn’t even need to keep up the appearance of having something inside.

He clearly doesn’t want to be called on in the audience, and when he defends the Phantom Thieves, as any sap in the crowd definitely would, Akechi is almost surprised. But then again, that’s how one keeps attention off themselves. Repeating the information that others want to hear.

He hangs around with people far brighter than him, and Akechi finds it amusing. Maybe he thought they could fill the void.

But the student is simply empty.

Until Akechi holds a gun to his bruised and battered head, his eyes glazed over from drugs and pain, and smirks in his murderer’s face.

The instant Morgana sees Joker, he knows he’s special. He can feel hope bubble up from deep within and the sight of the lanky kid, mischief brimming just beyond the veil, and something within him screams that he finally found the one. Morgana has a purpose, and so does Joker. Even if he doesn’t know what either of them are, or where either of them will go, Morgana knows that it’s somewhere. Something important.

And Joker? Joker is perfect. Morgana can see his soul. It’s loud, it’s bright, it’s unpredictable and it’s full.

Morgana can see beneath the mask, see the incarnation of hell itself, and knows that he is saved.

**Author's Note:**

> and then morgana tells his newfound savior to go to bed at 8pm every night because god forbid he lives a little


End file.
